


we have been a fortnight dead

by nantes (titians)



Category: Actor RPF, Hockey RPF
Genre: (Hints of) Stockholm Syndrome, Alternate Universe - Southern Gothic, F/M, Mentions of Past Murders, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-08
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-24 00:27:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1585040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/titians/pseuds/nantes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It begins and ends with a house; a house that swallows them whole but keeps the two of them and all their secrets safe inside it. (Always remember that ghosts are people and monsters can be kind too.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we have been a fortnight dead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tatou](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatou/gifts).



> i'm not quite sure how to explain this one other than by stating that gemma arterton looks like she could destroy a man with affection and i mean just look at [their](http://78.media.tumblr.com/c57e699d3b41032608872a32e3fa3907/tumblr_ngcn44D3vw1qbltroo1_500.gif) [faces](https://66.media.tumblr.com/83534906f176130e147aa8f836186ea8/tumblr_mwvutaegul1siomh7o1_500.jpg). but all the blame does not lie with them; most definitely some of it has to go to [jean cocteau](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_\(1946_film\)), [charles perrault](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebeard), and [charlotte bronté](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Eyre). and _bee._

> Repugnans tibi, ausus sum quaerere quidquid doctius mihi fide, certius spe, aut dulcius caritate visum esset. Quis itaque stultior me...   
>    
>  **S T . A U G U S T I N E**   
>    
>    
>    
>  The winding roads that led me here   
>  Burn like coal and dry like tears   
>  So here's my heart   
>  My dying soul   
>  Here's my ticket   
>  I want to go home.   
>    
>  **T H E C I V I L W A R S**   
>    
>    
>    
>  Belle, you mustn't look into my eyes. You needn't fear. You will never see me, except each evening at 7:00, when you will dine, and I will come to the great hall. And never look into my eyes.   
>    
>  **J E A N C O C T E A U**

 

 

 

 

 

The branch whips her face, cutting a gash across her cheek. Between her thighs she feels the horse's breathing become more erratic and she gently leans in, stroking his neck as she runs him harder, and whispers, "I know, I know." But they cannot stop. Not yet − not with still too few miles between her and the house she set ablaze, the house with the corpse on the library floor and the pool of blood all around it.

Gemma apologises again to the poor beast and spurs him on harder.

They run until he cannot. Large and strong, the horse has the manners to alert her to his impending end, slowly lowering their speed until she can safely slip off before he collapses down. He whinies softly as she brushes her hand down his neck. (The blood on her fingers is dry now, she leaves no mark on him, but even watching the pass of her ruddy fingertips against his dapple grey throat sends a chill down her spine.) "I'm so sorry," she whispers for a final time.

She has no means to end his suffering, left everything back in the house before she ran. For this, she leans down and kisses his neck. His breath gushes out onto her arm in a snort. Gemma tells him, "Thank you," but now she must go.

Her dress drags through the leaves and mud on the ground, heavy enough to disguise her footprints a little. Enough for them to miss them if they come looking for her now − perhaps in the morning they will be more obvious but Gemma hopes to be far enough away by then. Or, at least, have found somewhere to hide out. She neither walks nor runs, not wanting to tread to heavily but neither wanting to go too slowly. She has no idea how well the fire will hide the fact she _slit her husband's throat_ but nothing will hide the fact she fled.

(Alone.

She fled alone and that in itself could perhaps be her saving grace. There is no lover to be found, no reason for her to have killed him beyond he was a brute and she needed to.

Oh, such is life.)  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

The house appears like a beacon, a beautiful bright glorious thing atop the hill. Gemma almost cries in joy at the sight of it, the weathered grey stone and the dark slate of the roof (the lack of lights anywhere within it, the two boarded up windows). The gate is off one of its hinges, flakes of black paint coming away as she removes her hand and the remaining hinge groaning shrilly as it swings shut once more; Gemma cannot bring herself to care. It is a house, abandoned and far enough away from any other place that no one should find it.

She is surprised she found it herself.

The front door is unlocked, easily pushed open.

Force of habit has her calling out, "Hello? Anybody home?" Just to be sure. Of course, no one answers and Gemma smiles quickly, savouring the moment and the feeling of safety that washed over her. (Perhaps, if this was any other night and Gemma has stumbled across the house, another feeling would be washing over her as she steps over the threshold but tonight, this is it and she can evaluate, decide to stay or go once morning has come.)  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Jonathan hears the gate as it swings shut and moves into the walls before she has stepped properly inside. The house swallows him up, hiding him from her sight before she can know he is there − this is how he likes it.

He does not mean to pry but she seems to follow wherever he goes; first the study, then the dining room and into the kitchen, and onto the library. In there, she lights a fire − Jonathan had not been aware there was enough wood in the box for it but she makes only a small thing − then proceeds to undo the buttons along the back of her dress while the kindling takes properly to the flames. Watching her, he feels like an intruder (as if it is not his house she has just walked into and made herself at home within) and quickly drops his eyes.

He really does not mean to pry. Or spy.

He looks up once more at the sound she makes, peering between two books just in time to watch her dress catch flame. Even in the poor light, he can still make out the dark stains of blood across the front of it. He looks at her better now, noting the blood on her hands too.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

She falls asleep in his favourite chair.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

The house is more frightening in the morning. With everything bathed in light, Gemma realises just how many windows there are and worries that perhaps she has made a mistake coming inside. Everything is silent around her and that is the most terrifying thing of all. The silence. The way everything she does echoes loudly within it. She moves through the house and feels as though every noise she makes is amplified, as if she is not alone.

Standing in her petticoat, she shivers. She needs to find something to wear.

Not hoping for miracles − the house was a miracle on its own and Gemma feels she might not be in the best place to ask for any favours from God at the moment − she takes the stairs up to the next floor.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Jonathan reaches out to stop her as she searches through the wardrobe but aborts the movement when he remembers the wall. When he remembers that he is hiding, watching another person moving around his house. When he thinks, _Perhaps someone else should wear those dresses._

She selects a blue one, pale with a lace collar. It goes on easily but she cannot reach to tie the top button on the back.

(When his wife used to wear it, Jonathan used to always have to close it for her. A quick little thing, no more than a second, but he used to press a kiss to the top notch of her spine, underneath the nape of her neck, afterwards and let his hands linger on her sides for a second or two. He does not think of this now, watching this other woman in his wife's dress, but he will think of it later and feel an utter fool.)  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Gemma thinks there must be someone else in the house.

She stays for a week, constantly reassuring herself tonight is the last night, she cannot linger any longer here, they are going to come looking for her, it is not safe to be here another day. And every day, there is fresh food in the pantry and always two sets of plates in the sink for her to wash at the end of the evening. But she has yet to see anyone else.

Perhaps there is a house _keeper_ watching over the place for some absentee tenant?

If there is, they are not a very good one. Some rooms look lived in and looked after yet others are empty and bare, cobwebs in the corners and dust on the door handles she had to wipe off before she could make them turn properly.

On the eighth morning she decides maybe there is another person living in the house and she has just missed them − perhaps they keep funny hours or maybe they saw the blood on her skirts that first night and decided they wanted to have nothing to do with her but are too scared she will kill them too to tell her to leave. Then, on the tenth day, she decides this is nonsense and goes back to the idea of the housekeeper. They must only look after the rooms they use personally and will clean up the whole place when they know the master of the house is returning.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

For three weeks he waits for her to leave. Every night she washes his plates and returns them to the shelves and selects a new dress every morning. He keeps spying her and expecting her to suddenly bolt, suddenly afraid, suddenly horrified and needing to be anywhere but in this place. But she never does.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

The cut on her cheek heals eventually.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

On the second day of her sixth week in the house, she selects a book from a shelf in the library and the front cover falls away from her hand and onto the floor. Jonathan remembers the first time it did that with him, the hot flash of embarrassment that he had broken something that was not his to begin with − he smiles to himself as he watches her cheeks turn pink before she bends down to pick it up.

"Fear not," he hears himself say.

He had not meant to.

But she does not seem afraid. No. In the centre of the room, she stands quietly and looks around for where his voice came from. He coughs but she still does not locate him.

"It was already broken," he reassures her.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Gemma assumes the person must have been the housekeeper and she just missed them walking passed the doorway. She plays the moment over and over in her head until she needs to sit down in the large armchair, where she thinks about it some more and resolves to make the man dinner. It is only the polite thing to do, since she has been living in the house, unbothered and happily helping herself to the books and the food and the dresses all this while and he has never so much as once made his presence known to her before.

She makes enough to feed not just herself tonight and leaves him a plate out on the dining table.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Jonathan says 'thank you' softly through the walls the next morning; she nearly misses it as she exits the room, her skirts gently grazing the floor almost covering the noise but she turns quickly. Just in the doorway. Illuminated by the light from the hallway behind her.

He allows himself a moment just to look at her.

"Where are you?" she asks.

"Here," he replies, almost laughs but covers his mouth at the last moment.

A laugh could seem mocking. Intimidating. And Jonathan does not wish to scare her. So far she remains in the house, despite his unseen presence. Unlike so many others she has not run at the sound of his voice. She has not run and that is enough. Everything, almost. Jonathan drops his hand from his mouth and tries not to think about what it all means.

She asks, "Are you a ghost?"

He does not reply.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

The next morning Gemma scrapes her hair up and away from her neck, securing it with a black ribbon when she catches a shuffling noise from near the window. But when she grabs the curtain, pulling it back with a triumphant 'ah ha!', there is nothing to be found. Not a mouse or a even a spider nor the man she has spoken to twice now but never seen.

She presumes if he were indeed a ghost then he would have admitted as much to her yesterday afternoon when she had asked.

Also, a ghost would not require food.

Holding her breath, she turns away from the window and faces the centre of the room. She waits.

His voice echoes around, all the way to the high ceiling, as he says, "I am in the walls."  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Jonathan keeps waiting for her to run. To leave. To flee out of the door and leave it wide open and him sitting here, waiting for someone else to fill the space she has taken over. One rainy afternoon he watches as a shiver travels along her spine, making her touch at the back of her neck and bite her lip to stop it but closing the window fixes that. The next night she wakes with a jolt, sits bolt-right up in the bed and looks so afraid a little part of Jonathan aches to go out and comfort her. But they both return to sleep and when Jonathan wakes once more in the morning, she still remains.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

She catches sight of herself in the mirror one night as she brushes her hair, the shock of her pale skin in the middle of the deep dark of the room. She catches sight of herself but lets her eyes drop away from her reflection after a moment, worrying her bottom lip into her mouth with her teeth.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

It takes her a week to ask:

"Are you afraid of me?"

And this time it is harder for Jonathan not to laugh. He stifles it somewhere in his nose but then- he remembers the rust coloured stains of blood upon her skirts, the mud cakes into the tattered hem and the way she seemed almost. Almost afraid of herself that first night she took refuge in his house. (He also remembers the bare skin of her shoulders, the soft sight of them that he has now grown so used to and he feels a little embarrassed of himself, blushes despite the wall in between them.)

He must make a noise. Or perhaps she is only guessing. But she steps closer towards the wall he is behind, reaching out a tentative hand as she approaches then stops an arm's distance from the wall. She presses her fingertips into the blue wallpaper. (And Jonathan imagines he feels them pressing into him, pathetic and weakly he imagines this and has to step away, like one burnt by an ember spat from a fire.)

She says, "For that is the only reason left I can think of for why you have not come out yet."

Jonathan can only stare at the wall, knowing she is on the other side of it. It jars him, being unable to see her face, and he moves to ask her to step away but catches himself at the last moment. Catches himself with the thought that telling her to step back would do exactly that − she would step back and then keep on stepping away from him until her steps have taken her out of the door and on and on and he. He never gets to see her face again. So, for the moment, not seeing her face is alright.

"Perhaps I am a monster," he offers, making it sound like an apology.

She laughs and Jonathan lets himself smile at the bright, warm sound of it in the room. (It has been too long since laughter filled these walls, he thinks sadly.) "No," and she sounds insistent, "you cannot be a monster. For you are by far the kindest man I have ever met."

He finds himself asking, "But can a monster not be kind?"

He hears her step closer. Her breath hits the wall on her exhale and he can hear it so clearly. So loud, although soft, he can easily picture the rise and fall of her breast with it. The way her throat would move around her swallow before she speaks. She is so close now − if the wall were not between them, she could step into him. Jonathan closes his eyes, unable to do anything else. And takes a step forward.

She speaks to the wall as she says, "Yes, a monster can be kind. But- I still do not believe you are one. Unless you have three heads and scales, talons on the end of your fingers and sharp teeth."

Jonathan has to laugh.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

She finds the hidden room without really trying. One day there is a shelf covering the door and the next there is not. It is unlocked and for a moment Gemma hopes he will be on the other side of the door, waiting. But no, what greets her on the other side is a woman's face. A portrait. Not hung on the wall but balanced on a table, a slash through the centre of it along the carefully painted throat.

Gemma raises her hand to touch the tatter, gently folding it back into place and considering.

Whoever the woman is, she is beautiful. And cared for, in spite of the slash out of her. Someone has cared enough to polish the brass frame, to keep her portrait free of dust even though it sits alone in this room.

Oh.

Gemma pulls her hand back and, as if on instinct, reaches to gently clasp a hand around her own throat.

She leaves the room.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

"You did not have to leave," Jonathan tells her, watching her half-heartedly reading, turning the pages too quickly to truly be taking in any of the story. And although he says it, has sounded out the words properly, loud enough for her to hear, it feels as though he is lying to her.

The thought sits heavy in his stomach.

She returns with, "Who is she?"

Jonathan lurches at the tense, the nausea rising up his throat. He has to stop and remember how to breathe, practising it a few time through his nose − in and out and in and out − before he can speak again. "My wife," he eventually manages.

"She is beautiful."

"She has been dead for five years," he corrects.

At the table, she does not flinch. Even the awkward angle of her wrist, the painful way the bone juts underneath the skin as she keeps her book open, does not shake from strain. She seems the very picture of calm but Jonathan knows it is an act; it is too calculated and perfect to be true. A minute passes, then almost another and then she offers, "I am sorry."

"It was my fault."

"I'm sure it was not."  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Gemma realises he must be avoiding her when she comes down on the fourth morning and finds his food untouched. He has not spoken to her since that evening last week and part of her worries he is gone. She wishes to apologise for overstepping her boundaries, for seeing things that were not hers to see (although then she would have to apologise for being here at all and other than discovering the hidden room, he has never implied her presence in the house is upsetting or unwanted before. . . even now he has not told her to leave which frightens her more) and to ask how she may make it up to him.

But he is not there to ask. Which makes Gemma worry more.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

They do not speak for another week.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

The knock comes on the wall and instinctively she turns towards the door (because all knocks come at doors and not walls and he has been gone more than ten days and she has forgotten him). But Jonathan watches as she rights herself, rising from the table as he knocks again.

She comes to him quickly, a flash of a smile upon her face before he cannot see her properly anymore.

He goes to knock again but she knocks first.

He moves his hand to the noise and he feels the vibrations of the wall through his palm. He smiles. Even as she whispers 'I'm sorry' he smiles because she came to him when he called. "It's alright," he tells her, and means it. She has nothing to be sorry for.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

She considers telling and convinces herself not to six times before she actually summons up the courage to tell him. She owes him the truth. After weeks of living in his home, sharing his food and reading his books − sometimes at the same time, leaving behind greasy fingerprints that smudge the print but most of the books are covered in dust that Gemma has to blow off before she can read them, which is a lot more heartbreaking to see than the greasy fingerprints left behind by someone enjoying them − so she owes him something in return.

He has been more than generous.

Gemma climbs into bed but does not lie back into the pillows. She coughs, but only once, brief and quick; a snap of sound in the room. She will tell him in the morning and that is that.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

He watches the angle of her shoulders, the way her spine moves under her dress. She is washing her hands and every movement she makes is significant, practiced, like she knows his eyes are on her and she must make a show of it. Jonathan bites his lip to stop himself making a sound. But she says, "I know you're there," all the same.

"I have something to tell you."

She moves to the middle of the room and the space between them feels huge. Impossibly so. More than it ever has, even with the walls forever between them. Jonathan chokes on his air a little at the realisation. He presses his hand against the wall in an attempt to get closer to her. "You do not have to tell me anything," he replies, almost too late but it makes her stop and close her mouth. She does not owe him anything, not one thing. ( _Her being here is enough._ )

She says, "I want to."

Jonathan remains quiet.

She wets her lip before she speaks again, again, a significant move. This is the most afraid he has ever seen her, in all her time within the walls of this place. But she is not afraid of him, no; she is afraid of herself and what she has done and- _what Jonathan may do once he knows what she has done_. "I," she tries, but lets the word break off at the end of her breath, then tries again with:

"The night I first came here I had just killed a man. My husband; I cut his throat while he was sleeping in a chair."

Jonathan flinches.

She continues, "It is no excuse but he was not a good man." Her head hangs low on her neck, her eyes at the floor. She does not move. Neither of them do and Jonathan counts off seconds in his head, waiting for her to say something else. She does not speak again. And all he has to offer is:

"You are safe here."  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

After all this time they still do not yet know each other's names.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

"I killed my wife," comes his voice through the walls one morning on as she sits by the window. "But I loved her. She was everything to me; absolutely everything. I bought us this house and I imagined spending the rest of my life with her, both of us happy but then. She got sick. The doctor- doctors," he corrects, "could not find what was wrong with her. She just kept getting more and more ill and it started to drive her mad."

Gemma opens her mouth, trying to think of something to say to stop him but nothing comes out, not even air. He should not be telling her this; she does not need to know.

He continues on, unaware of Gemma pressing to tell him to quieten himself.

"She started to become dangerous. To herself and others. The doctors told me I should send her away, but I could not do so. This was our home and I loved her too much to ever think of sending her away, not when I had promised to care for her. And so I kept her here, away from everyone else. Only us in this place, together, until the day she could not handle it anymore. She tried to end her own life but- her illness had made her weak; she did not have the strength to do it herself. Not properly at least." His voice breaks. Gemma's heart sits in her throat, her mouth open as she breathes shallowly, her tongue drying out. So easily she pictures his wife, the beautiful blonde woman from the portrait in the room weeks ago. Sad blue eyes. Ethereally pale. 

But him, the husband, his face Gemma does not know.

"I found her bleeding, weak and tired."

She shakes her head for she knows what he is going to say next. But she cannot stop him.

He explains, "I did it for her. What else could I have done?"  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

"What indeed?" is her reply.

And the next afternoon she tells him through the wall, "I am going for a walk. Hopefully it will not become too dark before I return; I do not know the area here at all." Jonathan feels impossibly guilty for this (even though he is the one trapped within the walls and she is the stranger to his house) but mostly he is filled with a certain dread. Overwhelming worry takes him over. _What if she does not come back?_

He assures himself that will not be the case. But once the door has closed and he loses sight of her on the path, he cannot stop pacing.

The house is silent, his once more and yet he feels suffocated by it. With a palm flat to the wall he attempts to steady himself, closing his eyes and carefully breathing, but he is unable to stop thinking about- everything. About the sound of the door shutting behind her, of the image of her back as she walked further and further away from the door. And although there is no possible way he could have seen it − partly because he made sure not to and also partly due to how quickly she left after announcing she would − he pictures her face as the soft look of relief, of _freedom_ that moved across her features as she took her first step out of the door in so many weeks. The shape of her mouth and the glint of her eyes as she breathed in the fresh air; he could not have seen them and yet there they are in his head.

His hand on the wall clenches to become a fist.

He feels as though he may vomit.

Slipping down the wall, he pulls his knees into his chest. Everything he is feeling is ridiculous; he is as selfish and pathetic as a jilted lover, but he has- he has no right to feel this way. She is not his prisoner.

Jonathan stays with his chin resting on his knees until the sounds of the backdoor unlocking rattle up from downstairs. He lifts his face, turning towards the sound, the key in the latch and a person stepping over the threshold. A smile flickers at the corner of his mouth until, sadly, he remembers that she would not have brought a key.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Gemma laughs once he has said it.

"Yes," she affirms. "I tried the front door first but it must have locked behind me. I felt too foolish to knock and disturb you, so I went to the back of the house in the hope that the kitchen door was open. The housekeeper met me there."

They laugh once more together before letting the sound fade.

He tells her, "She tells me that your name is Gemma."  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

She is in the kitchen when he enters. ( _Gemma_. Her name is Gemma. He constantly has to remind himself of this, of the fact that she has a name and he knows it now.) She is reaching up to return something to a high shelf and she startles at the first sight of him but quickly rights herself, holding the jar tightly between her fingers as she lowers her arm. She stares at him but there is nothing about her that suggests she is afraid.

If anything, the noise she makes once he has stopped in the doorway sounds vaguely disappointed.

"You only have one head," she says. (Gemma says. Gemma Gemma _Gemma_ says, he thinks to himself, her name on loop in his head. She has a name and he knows it and she is standing here, unafraid and making jokes and even after everything he has seen of her through the walls, having her but a few metres away, she is more beautiful and so much more _solid_ than he could have ever known and Jonathan is utterly caught in this moment, so full of it that it catches his breath away from him. Gemma looks at him and Jonathan smiles.) She wrinkles her nose, then turns to place the jar back up properly this time.

He returns, "No scales or talons either." Then lets her know, "I am Jonathan."  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

At first it is good.

Neither of them bring it up. They do not speak about Gemma's dead husband or Jonathan's secret portrait room dedicated to his late wife. No one mentions that Jonathan lived inside the walls while Gemma moved around his home as if the space were hers. These topics are never discussed and perhaps, even just a little, it makes the first few days of them living within the same space easier.

They fall into a sort of pattern and it works. Only the housekeeper is upset by it but this only lasts a moment, her face breaking into a beaming, wide smile and she tells Jonathan, "It is good to see you," in the cooing, cosseting way a mother would speak to her son, and she cups her palm around the angle of his jaw.

But what was at first easy and good quickly tumbles into awkward and- odd.

It starts when Gemma asks him one morning if it is alright if she wears a certain dress. Jonathan has seen her in it a number of times by now (more than enough to now associate its shape with the curve of her waist instead of the slope of his wife's shoulders) yet here she stands in front of him, asking permission.

He grants it, naturally, but a feeling settles awkwardly around his shoulder that he cannot shake off for the rest of the day.

Then, he seems to trip over her in various places. He enters a room to find her already sitting within it, making him stumble out an apology and go and find somewhere else to sit. After the fifth time, two days after the first, Gemma turns to him with a somewhat put-out sigh and tells him, "It is your house, you can be in whichever room you prefer," before removing herself from the room and settling in the library.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

The walls feels closer around them both now.

 

 

 

\+ + +

 

 

 

They have properly shared the space of the house for little over two weeks now. Their bedrooms are side by side and they have found a way to move together in the dining room and through the halls that still lets them avoid getting too close to one another. They have made it work.

The house is _theirs_ now and Jonathan cannot decide if this frightens him or pleases him.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

Gemma finds him in the library.

He has started a fire, the heat from it not yet filling the room while the flames cast an orange glow on everything, throwing shadows high up onto the ceilings and top of the shelves. Jonathan continues to read, accustomed enough now to ignore her. (The book in his hands is one of the first ones she read upon finding the house − she remembers the hero of the story was Jack but she cannot recall his love. Gemma fears it was not a very good book but he is reading it so intensely, she assumes it must be the first time he has done so and leaves him with it, not wanting to spoil the story for him.)

She watches him for a moment, taking in the way the fire makes his hair appear lighter and how the tips of his ears are pink. Above the left his hair curls in one spot. Only one tuft, she has not yet found any other places it does so, and Gemma is foolishly enamoured with it.

She wants to touch it, to feel how soft it is between her fingers.

So she does.

As she reaches out her hand, her whole arm trembles. The night she killed her husband, her hand did not tremble as she slit his throat but now. Now, as she reaches for Jonathan and the curl above his ear, Gemma's hand trembles and she laughs at her own folly. He looks up at the sound, shocked at it out of the silence but unflinching from her; he seems to lean into her hand when she touches him, if anything she notes.

Her fingernails scrape lightly against his scalp.

Jonathan shifts again and Gemma has to step further into his space to counter it.

"I'm sorry," she says, out of nowhere and a little breathless. He tilts his face to look up at her, which in turn makes her palm cup against his cheek. His skin is warm. She traces the pad of her thumb over his stubble. She feels his breath across her own flesh.

He says, "It is alright."

And he reaches up a hand to lay upon her side. Even through the material of her dress, she feels the weight and the heat of it. Firm but comforting, as if he is weighing her down and keeping her with him; it is not a heavy touch but it is there. His hand is there and Gemma is not going anywhere. She must say as much, the words slipping from her mouth without her noticing, for next he buries his nose into the bodice of the dress, pushes button into her stomach, and breathes out a soft 'thank you'.  
  
  
  
  


\+ + +

 

 

 

The dress is no longer his wife's. It smells and feels and has taken on too much of Gemma that Jonathan cannot imagine it having ever belonged to his wife in the past. He first noticed it (properly, not just idle thoughts as he looked over at her by the window while he sat at the table) when he pressed his face into her, catching the steady thump of her heartbeat on his ear; he first noticed it in that moment, and now, as he carefully unbuttons the bodice as she pulls the end of his shirt out of his trousers, that the smell of her skin, of her hair, of everything about her has not only taken over the dress but the house as well. The library and the dining room and the second study and the bedroom she sleeps in every night, they all smell like her, as if she has claimed the whole house as hers without ever really trying to.

His mouth grazes her ear and she whispers his name back to him, turning her head as he moves for her mouth and meeting him halfway.

It is by no means a smooth, perfect kiss. Their mouths meet, Jonathan breathing into her mouth as he pulls her in, and they have gone about this the wrong way. Their clothes are already half off, her dress unbuttoned and his shirt askew, but Jonathan does not want to let go of the sense of urgency.

He leads her and pulls her up the stairs, stumbling on one and using her to steady himself before bumping her hips into the banisters and making her lightly gasp against his mouth on the next. At the top of the stairs he leads her to his room, the door right next to hers − her eyes are closed, missing the moment but Jonathan steals the fact away for himself, hoping she will realise once they are properly inside.

There is a tearing sound prior to her dress falling to the floor but Jonathan cannot care about it.

They fuck on top of the covers, with the curtains still open but the night is dark enough outside to hide them from anyone else. In this place it is only them, just the two of them inside the four walls of the house. Nothing else. Jonathan says as much as he mouths down her neck to her collarbone, says it then immediately regrets it but cannot stop talking. He keeps talking after that, despite trying to press the words into her skin with tongue and teeth and lips, but they keep coming. He cannot make out what he is saying, only knows that he is talking to her while he fucks her and she is not stopping him − not even when he whines and buries his mouth into her chest, buries all the stupid, truly reckless things he says into Gemma's skin, hoping that if he kisses her enough it will hide any sentiments he may betray and admit to her, a little too open and honest as she presses her fingers into his shoulders harder. She rolls her head back for him, pushing into the bed and throat bared, and Jonathan grabs her by the jaw, pressing his thumb into the hinge of it as he kisses next to her mouth, panting and desperate.

He whispers something onto her lips, he does not even know what he is saying any more but he cannot stop talking, keeps going and making more of a fool of himself but Gemma hisses something back into the space between them, the hot, clammy space between them where their shared breaths mix and it tastes of both of them, then kisses him.

He shifts, she moves her hips. Breaking their mouths apart, Jonathan gets onto his knees and yanks her with him, perhaps harder than he first meant to but she moans and comes easily with him. With her arm around his shoulders and his mouth still on her cheek, he says, "Don't leave."

She gasps and her fingers slip through the sweat on his skin and into his hair at the nape.

"Don't go," he says, as if now that he has said it, he must continue saying it because it is everything.

Gemma crashes her mouth into his, swallowing down his next breath, and he bites the corner of her lips, revelling in the way she moans for him, his nose butting her cheek and his hand skidding up her hip to her waist, pulling her closer as she replies, "I won't."  
  
  
  
  


**_F I N ._ **


End file.
